Zimbabwean Government to Give Farmers More Land

The Zimbabwean government will acquire an extra 8.3 million hectares of land from white farmers to resettle landless Zimbabweans, the East African Standard newspaper reported on Saturday.

The program which has so far benefited 100,000 families will continue, Joseph Msika, Zimbabwe's vice president and chairman of Land Acquisition Committee, was quoted as saying at a press conference here.

"The question of land is paramount to our people. The white man did not come to Zimbabwe carrying land, that is why they should share their idle land. We have refused to be arm-twisted by the British on the issue," he said.

He said that there are 4,500 commercial white farmers occupying 12.5 million hectares of land and 12 million black Zimbabweans living on 16 million hectares.

Msika, who was on a brief stopover in Nairobi to Uganda, said that for two decades they attempted to resolve land problems with the British government without success.

When the white commercial workers refused to share the land, the government took it from them, he stressed.






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